After SpaceX became a full participant in the competition to create a lunar landing module (HLS) for the Artemis program, the pace of Starship development slowed down radically. The reason for everything is increased safety requirements: the explosions familiar to engineers from Elon Musk's team (that is, I'm sorry, unplanned lightning disassembly of prototypes) began to cause an order of magnitude more questions from NASA. In particular, because of this, the timing of the first flight of the revolutionary spacecraft into orbit has already been postponed countless times. But now the state agency itself has set approximate dates.
The long-awaited news for cosmonautics fans was reported by the SpaceNews portal: NASA expects the first test orbital flight of Starship from SpaceX in early December. Such conclusions were made by Mark Kirasich, Deputy First Assistant to the head of the Artemis Campaign Development direction of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He spoke on Monday, October 31, before the Committee on Manned Missions and Related Operations of the NASA Advisory Board.
Kirasich's report was based on the current state of the Starship project, an analysis of tests already passed and planned tests. In addition, before the first flight of the new spacecraft into space, SpaceX must obtain a launch license from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Earlier, this agency had already delayed the possibility of launching a giant steel rocket due to the assessment of the damage of the cosmodrome in Boca Chica to the local environment. After several long months of bureaucratic delays, the company was still allowed to launch (from an environmental point of view), but was obliged to fulfill 75 points of mandatory measures to reduce the burden on nature.
In total, NASA is waiting for the results of four test flights from SpaceX before the launch of a full-fledged mission under the Artemis program. The first, as already mentioned, is in December 2022. Its program has not changed and corresponds to the one that the company described in the application for regulators a year and a half ago: the launch from Boca Chica, the controlled descent of Super Heavy into the Gulf of Mexico, the entry of Starship into orbit and departure from it before the completion of one full orbit, the landing of the ship near the Hawaiian Islands.
The second orbital flight will involve pumping fuel in space — a critically necessary procedure for using Starship in any interplanetary and lunar missions. The details of the third mission are not yet known — it is assumed that it will be "long". And finally, the fourth launch is a full—fledged rehearsal of the flight to the Moon, landing and take-off from it.
Before that, the first orbital prototype, in addition to the approval of the launch by regulators, will have to pass several mandatory tests on Earth. Among them is the burning of all 33 Raptor engines of the first stage of Super Heavy, as well as a "wet dress rehearsal", which is the working out of all pre—launch procedures, including full refueling, but without directly ignition and separation from the launch table.
Super Heavy and Starship on the launch table, sea viewImage Source: Nic Ansuini, NASASpaceflight
Note that despite the great weight of the opinion of NASA representatives regarding the pace of development of the Starship project, they do not mean that the ship will really fly in a little over a month. Yes, unlike the optimistic Musk, civil servants usually voice more restrained and realistic assessments. But, anyway, when the revolutionary SpaceX interplanetary spacecraft became part of the state program for the exploration of the Moon, the company's reckless style of work in this project clearly had to be abandoned. For the most part, anyway.
Another confirmation of this is the consequences of an explosion on the launch pad in July, when fuel components flared up under it during a test of Super Heavy engine turbopumps. Previously, SpaceX engineers would hardly have delayed further work with the prototype for more than a couple of days.
Now, the incident has attracted the close attention of representatives of NASA and the FAA: Musk's company was required to work out safety procedures in detail, as well as analyze all the data received in order to prevent such an incident in the future in any case. This does not mean that SpaceX would not have done it anyway, but if the prototype was not damaged and it could fly, the company could still launch it, and deal with the problem of "cotton" along the way and then. From now on, priorities have changed.
